|
Chapter One
Pears of the World Sarah Nooter Pears of the World We, the pears of the world, would like for you to eat us whole. We want you to peel us, to boil us, to poach us. Smother us in the milk of raspberries. Singe us with molten chocolate. Grow us, pick us, wash and slice us, chew us, tell us when we're too ripe and too dry. No, really. Phoebe Prioleau On the Corner of Fulton and Liberty The woman in the Contact-lens blue Suit and matching stilettos catches her Heel in the Subway grating At rush hour. She Crouches, half Barefoot, tugs Three times as legs Pass her by. The shoe pops out- Lucky! She Didn't want Anything more, Elizabeth Bear Driving Home at Night After Picking Up the Milk A heron flew over the road and the car by the neighbor's pond. The headlights caught her white underbelly brush of wide wings a small moon rising. She must've been there fishing long neck dipping to snip at the flicking tails stilt legs treading through muddy water. The drought left a wet smell at the bank, grass reached towards the cracked mud. The sun set with the rising wind that pushed rain into Texas for the first time in five months. She never did find a fish slow enough for her to swallow. She could pull herself away easily raising those great feathers to the sky skimming the water's surface as though she was the air herself a bit of down instead of a great body. She was a ghost too on the road home another incomplete thought one more unknown in the rearview mirror. Katina Antoniades 1920 in a blue and white dress she streams by on the sidewalk the rain and the night as soft as a dog, ear Katina Antoniades Poem at a Quarter to Six my mind winds rope around the stars & planets to keep them together Katrina Antoniades Windsock you are a windsock in a trailer park, the only name I know on an unfamiliar map, the last number counted between thunder and lightning. Lauren Brozovich A 1950s Televised A-Bomb Drill Aired for Educational Purposes written in response to scenes from the documentary The Atomic Café In the camera's field of view schoolchildren collapse from their seats to the rectangles beneath their desks, hands folded sepal fashion over their necks. On the board there may have been perfect cursive words: sepal, petal, stamen, carpel and opulent, Georgia O'Keefe chalk diagrams of flower-ovaled ovaries, at-attention stamens, the cocktail-straw-thin pollen tube. On the teacher's desk there might have even been a blue opened flower with visible insides made by a send-in science company out of cloud-painted plastic and pin-stuck foam, pried apart, hinged, so that the children could look inside and feel. They may have even been learning about touch-sensitive plant dynamics, the spontaneous collapsing of leaves, petals, the whole propaganda of evolution. Duck & cover: fifty children sliding out of wooden seats into fifty fetal-positioned 10-year-olds separated from their at-home mothers who flash across the screen diving against kitchen cabinets, cooking ranges, refrigerator grilles and folding their dishwater hands prayer-like over their kerchiefed heads, perhaps breathing to God, mouths pressed against braided rugs, that the Bleeding Hearts they had felt blossom inside themselves were as safe in their desk huddles as this fall-out documentary promised and not as vulnerable as they looked: retracted blossom backs huddled over heavy Easter hearts on a wooden floor in which no seed could grow. Lauren Brozovich In the Girls' Dressing Room Before the Gulling of Beatrice Scene in Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing ... Does anyone have a hair band? bobby pins littering the concrete, balanced half in pursed mouths like thermometers, slid into wavy hair, pinned over the tips of face-framing braids, jumbles of white wire hangers flagged with cleaners' tickets, Victoria's Secret bras, and 18th century petticoats, thin backs wriggling into whalebone bustiers, Can someone help me get out? arms signalling drowning from the tops of over-the-head dresses, slim waists scratchscrimmed in voile-&-stays, the liquid rustle of girl-legs stepping in and out of acetate petticoats that stand free form like durable meringue lamp shades, squares of blusher, blue eye shadow, thickened mascara, Neapolitan pink & blue stage-paint scuffed over the vague white seats of full skirts, pantalettes, petticoats ... Can someone curl my hair? half-done heads sharing caddies of hot rollers, stained white gloves, lace veils, nosegays, a circlet of fake flowers, camisoles of laundered paper, Tuscany-smooth ankles caught up in Maypole ribbon, flurries of cheek pinching, blush brushes, eyelash curlers ... the fabulousness of getting dressed to arrive breathlessly undressed onstage in camisoles & tiers of wedding cake petticoats to fold back over our knees like bedcovers and ballerina feet to unbind & slip naked into silver bowls of freezing water.... Keystone Fida Fida Fida Fida They say that firemen are good chefs. I often see them in the supermarket, patrolling the produce, browsing through the spice section. Their raincoats and helmets are a strange sight, standing out like the one little girl on the carousel who's twice the size of anyone else. I always knew they would be there before I went inside- their truck wasn't usually parked on the street. The firemen sit in their station, relaxing on couches, watching Oprah and Yan Can Cook and scribbling down recipes. One time a firehouse caught fire when the firemen went out one day to fight another fire. Some rookie must have burned the muffins. Matthew Moses Farmacy Down on the farmacy the personal care items lie slightly ajar. Moisturizer and Shampoo peeking out into their new world already instinctively looking for some poor soul with dry skin and dirty hair. Down on the farmacy the feminine products are harvested along with transparent deodorants and fluorescent toothbrushes. They say pharmers are a rough breed waking up before dawn to water the condoms and milk the shaving cream. Yesterday Congress passed the farmacy bill, insuring a brighter-toothed shinier-haired, better-smelling America. They say the farmacies are the backbone of this beautiful nation. Julia Kate Jarcho Iconography At night the supermarket is nearly empty. One girl head heavy leans on her friends quietly with a laugh sometimes. I have never seen a bird so perfect in its flight as she in her unsteady fall. A wind of lavender hair covers her eyes. Hunched she sways in absolute time with our generation, our ragged apocalypse, but we can only call her Sophie, or Violet. Rebecca Givens The Twist of Her Head the twist of her head was like the dictates of fate the green of her dress could cure colds the sweat on her brow was the water of Bath which could bring you health again you told me this after a long day of work your car had broken down and you were forced to leave it by the side of the road find another mode of transportation search the want ads for another home you told me this as you were crying how did I get to be such an old man able to believe that a face could save me I saw it only once on the outbound train Jenny Jones Image Retention She had turned her head away, but I could still see the distant look across her face. It did not dispel her need to talk about it. All the time that had passed since she'd realised that she had lost him, only now was she able to pin it down to an exact moment. Maybe even a date if she looked back through calendars, diaries of that summer. She put down the coffee mug I had filled for her and began the story, never once looking me in the eye. I knew why. Had she caught my eye, had she caught anyone's eye, the reality of the truth and understanding that lies in the pupil and the iris might have outweighed his importance and sunk her story back to earth. There she would find it so easy and so comfortable to slip again in to dismissing it as imagination, an illusion of her heart. But she continued, driven by the power of her conviction. It had been a lighthearted summer evening. She was heading out for dinner, going through the motions of forgetting about him. What had passed between them before he left was complicated, she realised that now. But it had been different then. She recalled to me the colour of the sky, watching the rain clouds outside my kitchen window. A deep, golden blue, were her words. She said that she had always known when their paths were about to collide, she could feel it inside her bones. But on this fair summer evening her mind's laughter had silenced her nagging fears of his ghost. But, she hallo laughed, feeling his presence in her vicinity did not mean that her stomach maintained its functions on her friend's declaration that he was looming on the horizon. In front of the tartan shop, with a man and a woman she understood were his brother and his brother's girlfriend, without being told. He looked desperate; he was causing a fuss, waving his arms, emphatically stressing his problem. She did not hear any of the words he was using to explain his difficulty in shopping for wedding presents. His mouth was as blank as a goldfish's to her. His arm actions carried the motion to the flops of blond on his head. As they approached she only halfheartedly answered his polite greetings and enquiries into her well-being. She told me that she had not looked at him once, and that was why she remembered the sky so well ... she had looked up at the buildings somewhere to the right of his left shoulder. Image retention. The grey tenement of the upper floors of department stores is still fixed on her retina. (Continues...) |